Theology and the Scientific Imagination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amos Funkenstein
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Scientific Thinking ◽  
Classic Work ◽  
Secular Theology ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Scientific Imagination

This book is a pioneering work of intellectual history that transformed our understanding of the relationship between Christian theology and the development of science. The author explores the metaphysical foundations of modern science and shows how, by the 1600s, theological and scientific thinking had become almost one. Major figures like Descartes, Leibniz, Newton, and others developed an unprecedented secular theology whose debt to medieval and scholastic thought shaped the trajectory of the scientific revolution. The book ends with the author's influential analysis of the seventeenth century's “unprecedented fusion” of scientific and religious language. Featuring a new foreword, the book is a pathbreaking and classic work that remains a fundamental resource for historians and philosophers of science.

Moving Further Beyond Secularism: A “Lutheran” Reading of the Cosmology of Thomas Nagel

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-254
Author(s):  
Yiftach Fehige
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Thomas Nagel ◽  
Metaphysical Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Individual Consciousness ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Universe

Summary Thomas Nagel has proposed a highly speculative metaphysical theory to account for the cosmological significance that he claims the human mind to have. Nagel argues that the mind cannot be fully explained by Darwinian evolutionary theory, nor should theological accounts be accepted. What he proposes instead is an explanation in terms of cosmological non-purposive teleological principles. Our universe awakens to itself in each and every individual consciousness. What comes to light in a pronounced manner when consciousness arises, are the mental aspects of the stuff that the universe is made of. These mental aspects are always concurrently present with the physical aspects of the basic elements that constitute the universe. This paper situates Nagel’s cosmology in the context of discussions of the relationship between modern science and Christian theology. It focuses on the history of modern science’s efforts to locate the origins of humanity. The aim of the paper is to present a qualified “Lutheran” reading of Nagel’s theory of the cosmological significance of the human mind. This will unearth strong reasons to think that Nagel’s cosmology is less secular than it claims to be.

The Relevance of Ancient Science to the Survival of Secularism

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-76
Author(s):  
Richard Carrier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Ancient Science

Abstract To oppose Secularism modern Christians depend on myths about the historical development of civilization. Such as the myth of a Christian America, imagining such things as that the United States Constitution was based on Biblical Christian principles. Parallel to this myth is another about science: that the Scientific Revolution, and therefore modern science, was based on Biblical Christian principles and could not have occurred (and therefore cannot continue) without them. Necessary to this are several false claims, most particularly that ancient pagans never did and never could have made any significant scientific progress, and that Christian theology was essential to doing so. These myths are here dispelled with recourse to a survey of the actual facts of the matter.

Language, Metaphor, and Chalcedon: A Case of Theological Double Vision

1995 ◽  
Vol 88 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-255
Author(s):  
Stephen W. Need
Keyword(s):  
William Blake ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Double Vision ◽  
Language Functions ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Theological Language ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Northrop Frye

The question of how human language functions in relation to God constitutes one of the most difficult problems in Christian theology. I contend that Christian notions of language about God should be constructed in light of christology, since both are concerned with the relationship between the human and the divine. Northrop Frye, drawing on the poetry and thought of William Blake, speaks of the importance of “the double vision of a spiritual and a physical world simultaneously present” in understanding how religious language works. This fundamental quality of double vision or tension characterizes the relationship between the human and the divine both in language about God and in christology. In this article I shall examine several aspects of the relationship between the human and the divine: first, the basic problem of theological language as discussed by George Lindbeck; second, the notion of theological language as metaphorical, as discussed by Sallie McFague; and third, christology as found in the Chalcedonian definition of Christian faith. I shall conclude that it is appropriate to construct notions of language about God in light of Chalcedonian christology.

Beyond the Religious Pursuit of Race

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Keel
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Research Survey ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 5 provides a summary of the major claims of the book. It also explains how the conflict thesis for representing the relationship between science and religion fails to capture how Christian intellectual history has been key to the formation of the race concept in modern science. Citing recent data from a 2015 Pew Research Survey, this chapter argues that the conflict thesis remains a fixture in the minds of Americans, which has consequences for shifting public perceptions about the assumed secularity of the scientific study of race. It closes with a call for recognizing that the scientific study of race is involved in providing a solution to the existential dilemma of defining what it means to be human. This solution is neither value-free nor detached from the cultural and religious inheritance that has fastened itself to the work of Euro-American scientists who study race.

scholarly journals Reason and ethos: Consequences of their separation and necessity of their unity

2003 ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Mihailo Markovic
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Active Principle ◽  
Scientific Culture ◽  
The World

Although the concept of "reason" acquired a precise meaning and clearly defined field of validity only in Kant's critical philosophy, the term has a long genesis in European intellectual history. The roots of the concept lie in the Greek concept of the logos and may be reduced to six basic meanings. The earliest Greek thinkers used the word logos to denote the logical structure of the human thought and the rational structure of the world. Anaxagoras considered the all-embracing spiritual principle of the nous the source of overall rationality. In the philosophy of the Stoa the term - logos spermaticos is the active principle acting on passive matter in order to create the world. For the Stoics, the concept of logos is the fundamental principle of entire morality. In Christian theology, the God is logos, Holy Spirit - pneuma the soul. In modern philosophy the basic meanings of the Greek logos were taken over by Latin terms "intellectus" and "ratio". These concepts chart quite clearly two basic lines of European thought, one characterized by immediate and the other by mediated discursive understanding of the truth. Kant was the first in the history of philosophy to introduce the essential distinction between understanding and reason (Verstand and Vernunft). According to this distinction, understanding is analytical and abstract, while reason is the source of apriori principles connecting and grounding the whole of our knowledge and volition. Therefore Kant distinguishes theoretical from practical reason. Though practical reason applies the concepts and principles of theoretical reason, it has priority over the latter because it bestows practical reality also on what is theoretically unknowable (freedom, God, immortality of the soul). The primacy of practical reason was especially emphasized by Fichte in his Doctrine of Science. Reason is for him a purely purposeful activity. The idea of reason attains full articulation in Hegel's philosophy of the absolute spirit. For Hegel, reason is first of all a world principle rather than a human capacity. Unlike Kant, whose reason is basically static, a substantial novelty of Hegel's conception of the objective reason is its dynamism, enabling it to reach an increasing awareness "of itself" in its dialectical development. By including the idea of progress in his conception of reason, Hegel introduced an evaluative element in the concept of rationality and thus enabled a connection between reason and ethos in the era of modernity. The deepest cleavage between reason and ethos was opened by the modern science. On one hand, it improved human life by its discoveries and new knowledge, liberating man from religious superstition and other forms of subordination, but on the other it displayed a restrictive attitude not only toward all sorts of value judgments but also toward many dimensions of reason. The positive knowledge of modern science with no ethos lacks any critical self-awareness of the purpose of knowledge, of how it can be used to the benefit of mankind or abused. Thus for establishing a humanistic scientific culture the connection between reason and ethos must be reaffirmed in modern science.

The Economics of Sin: A Not So Dismal Science

2010 ◽  
Vol 103 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-371
Author(s):  
Carol A. Newsom
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Seven Deadly Sins ◽  
Area Of Concern ◽  
The Relationship

Sin appears to be enjoying a recent surge of popularity, and not just among the religious. From Oxford University Press's popular series on the seven deadly sins to Alan Jacobs's Original Sin: A Cultural History,2 these books address a contemporary ambivalence about the traditional religious language of sin, even as they make a case for the continuing relevance of historical conceptions of sin. To this body of literature, Gary Anderson's Sin: A History is a distinguished addition. Like the books mentioned above, it is written to be accessible to a lay audience. Unlike them, however, it is much more explicitly theological and built on a much deeper scholarly foundation. While Anderson's title is provocative, it is possibly misleading. The issue of sin is protean, and much of the recent literature has focused on the moral psychology of sin. That is not Anderson's area of concern. Rather, his focus is specifically on the operations and implications of a key metaphor for describing the relationship that sin creates between a person and God. The metaphor in question is that of sin as debt. The history that Anderson traces is the emergence and development of this metaphor both in Jewish and in Christian theology and religious practice.

Imagery and Metaphorical Space of the Term in the Language of Scientific Texts by V. Vinogradov

2018 ◽  
Vol 79 (9) ◽  
pp. 61-66
Author(s):  
N. V. Khalikovа
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Scientific Thinking ◽  
Scientific Texts ◽  
Basic Term ◽  
Pragmatic Information ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Relationship

The article considers the functions of the system of verbal imagery’s in the creation of the scientific style of V.V. Vinogradov. The figurativeness of basic, background and metaphorical terms is described. The semantic structure of the image of the basic term «style» is analyzed, figurative paradigms of the concepts Language, Speech and Style are revealed. The article shows the relationship between scientific thinking and metaphorical style, the role of sustainable cognitive metaphors in the creation, storage and transfer of pragmatic information and the creation of a cultural and historical context.

A Religious State (A Study of Hasyim Asyari and Muhammad Iqbal's Thought on the Relation of Religion, State and Nationalism)

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 226
Author(s):  
Arik Dwijayanto ◽  
Yusmicha Ulya Afif
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Early Generation ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Religion And State ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Diverse Cultures

<p><em>This article explores the concept of a religious state proposed by two Muslim leaders: Hasyim Asyari (1871-1947), an Indonesian Muslim leader and Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938), an Indian Muslim leader. Both of them represented the early generation when the emerging revolution for the independence of Indonesia (1945) from the Dutch colonialism and India-Pakistan (1947) from the British Imperialism. In doing so, they argued that the religious state is compatible with the plural nation that has diverse cultures, faiths, and ethnicities. They also argued that Islam as religion should involve the establishment of a nation-state. But under certain circumstances, they changed their thinking. Hasyim changed his thought that Islam in Indonesia should not be dominated by a single religion and state ideology. Hasyim regarded religiosity in Indonesia as vital in nation-building within a multi-religious society. While Iqbal changed from Indian loyalist to Islamist loyalist after he studied and lived in the West. The desire of Iqbal to establish the own state for the Indian Muslims separated from Hindus was first promulgated in 1930 when he was a President of the Muslim League. Iqbal expressed the hope of seeing Punjab, the North West province, Sind and Balukhistan being one in a single state, having self-government outside the British empire. In particular, the two Muslim leaders used religious legitimacy to establish political identity. By using historical approach (intellectual history), the relationship between religion, state, and nationalism based on the thinking of the two Muslim leaders can be concluded that Hasyim Asyari more prioritizes Islam as the ethical value to build state ideology and nationalism otherwise Muhammad Iqbal tends to make Islam as the main principle in establishment of state ideology and nationalism.</em></p><em>Keywords: Hasyim Asyari, Muhammad Iqbal, religion, state, nationalism.</em>

О вопросах фольклоризма в письменной литературе

2019 ◽  
pp. 31-33
Author(s):  
Суусар Искендерова
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Past ◽  
Scientific Term ◽  
Literature Culture ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship

Аннотация: Исследование проблемы фольклоризма является наиболее актуальной в современной науке о фольклоре. На разных этапах развития художественной литературы для формирования индивидуального творчества писателя особенно значимым становятся фольклорные жанры, сюжетные мотивы и художественные средства. В статье рассматривается связь письменной литературы и фольклора, особенно точка зрения проблеме фольклоризма в прошлом и их анализ. Термин «фольклоризм» начал использоваться советскими исследователями учеными как научный термин еще в 1930-х гг. Термин «фольклоризм» используется в различных сферах культуры, а в этой статье мы будем рассматривать в литературе. Несмотря на то, что на протяжении многих лет этот вопрос изучается литературоведами, фольклористами, все -таки нет единого теоретического определения понятия. Ключевые слова: фольклор, фольклоризм, литература, культура, письменная литература, художественная литература, оседлый народ, пословицы и поговорки, фольклорные песни. Аннотация: Көркөм адабияттын өнүгүүсүнүн ар кайсы баскычтарында сүрөткердин жеке чыгармачылыгынын калыптанышы үчүн фольклордук жанрлар, сюжеттер, мотивдер жана көркөм каражаттар айрыкча мааниге ээ. Макалада жазма адабият менен фольклордук карым-катышы, айрыкча фольклоризм маселеси жөнүндө мурдагы көз караштарга кайрылып, аларга талдоо жүргүзүү менен бирге автор өз байкоолорунда келтирет. “Фольклоризм” деген илимий термин 1930-жылы баштап колдонула баштаган. “Фольклоризм” термини маданияттын түрдүү сфераларында кеңири колдо- нулат, бул жерде адабияттагы колдонулушун каралат. Макалада адабий материал менен фольклордук байланышын терең түшүнүү үчүн адабий фольклоризм маселесинин талаштуу жактары каралат. Түйүндүү сөздөр: фольклор, фольклоризм, адабият, маданият, жазма адабият, көркөм адабият, көчмөн калк, макал-лакап, фольклордук ырлар. Annotation: The study of the problem of folklore is the most relevant in the modern science of folklore. At various stages in the development of fiction, folklore genres, plot motifs, and artistic means become especially significant for the formation of the writer's individual creativity. The article examines the relationship between written literature and folklore, especially the point of view of the problem of folklorism in the past and their analysis. The term "folklorism" began to be used by Soviet scholars as a scientific term back in the 1930s. The term "folklorism" is used in various fields of culture, and in this article we will consider in the literature. Despite the fact that for many years this issue has been studied by literary scholars, folklorists, all the same there is no single theoretical definition of the concept. Keywords: folklore, folklorism, literature, culture, written literature, fiction, settled people, proverbs and sayings, folk songs.

Idleness and Freedom in Michel de Montaigne’s “Essays”

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-202
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Spiritual Quest ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

The article advances a hypothesis about the composition of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. Specialists in the intellectual history of the Renaissance have long considered the relationship among Montaigne’s thematically heterogeneous thoughts, which unfold unpredictably and often seen to contradict each other. The waywardness of those reflections over the years was a way for Montaigne to construct a self-portrait. Spontaneity of thought is the essence of the person depicted and an experimental literary technique that was unprecedented in its time and has still not been surpassed. Montaigne often writes about freedom of reflection and regards it as an extremely important topic. There have been many attempts to interpret the haphazardness of the Essays as the guiding principle in their composition. According to one such interpretation, the spontaneous digressions and readiness to take up very different philosophical notions is a form of of varietas and distinguo, which Montaigne understood in the context of Renaissance philosophy. Another interpretation argues that the Essays employ the rhetorical techniques of Renaissance legal commentary. A third opinion regards the Essays as an example of sprezzatura, a calculated negligence that calls attention to the aesthetic character of Montaigne’s writing. The author of the article argues for a different interpretation that is based on the concept of idleness to which Montaigne assigned great significance. He had a keen appreciation of the role of otium in the culture of ancient Rome and regarded leisure as an inner spiritual quest for self-knowledge. According to Montaigne, idleness permits self-directedness, and it is an ideal form in which to practice the freedom of thought that brings about consistency in writing, living and reality, in all of which Montaigne finds one general property - complete inconstancy. Socratic self-knowledge, a skepticism derived from Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus, and a rejection of the conventions of traditional rhetoric that was similar to Seneca’s critique of it were all brought to bear on the concept of idleness and made Montaigne’s intellectual and literary experimentation in the Essays possible.

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